Marx's important error

If you tried to achieve a 19th-century standard of living on twenty hours of work per week, you would face three problems. First, many aspects of the 19th-century standard of living would be quite cheap nowadays, but are illegal. 19th-century-quality housing, sanitation, food, and medical care can't be legally provided today. Second, if you did manage to live a 19th-century lifestyle, you would probably be psychologically unable to cope with having a lifestyle so materially inferior to the people around you. Being denied comfort and medical care enjoyed by other people when you were in distress would offend your dignity. Third, even if you did manage to cope psychologically, you would be unable to participate meaningfully in society, because other people would draw conclusions about your strength of character or mental stability.<p>The only way to achieve Marx's dream would be to make a society-wide decision to apply productivity gains toward leisure instead of towards the material standard of living. But guess what: most people <i>like</i> to work, and everyone <i>needs</i> to feel productive to be psychologically healthy. I'm sure that was easy for someone like Marx to overlook when pondering the plight of people who were brutally overworked, but it changes the equation quite a bit. Plus, productivity translates into power, and everyone has a certain appetite for power.

The problem with this question is that there is a significant gap between pay rates for part time and full time work.<p>I am a contract worker for a big company right now. They expect me to work 40 hours or more a week. If I could convert this contract to 20 or 24 hours a week for the same pay, I'd do it quickly. The problem is that those contracts or jobs are hard to find, and they usually pay significantly less per hour. (We'll ignore health care for now.)<p>I'd love to run or work at a company where most people work 20 hours a week, with spikes only as necessary. It would mean a completely different attitude toward working.

<i>This, though, raises a question. Why is it that the rise in productivity hasn’t had the effects predicted by Marx and Keynes? Why have our “needs” risen as our productive powers have, with the result that the hours we devote to employment haven’t fallen as much as Marx or Keynes forecast? Why is it that so many of us - I count myself fortunate to be a partial exception - haven’t used wealth to free ourselves from alienating labour?</i><p>There's no deep question here. Only a language game. Like "does a tree falling in the forest make a sound if there's no one around to hear it?"<p>Step one: replace loaded words like "needs", "wants", "labour", and "employment" with just "utility".<p>EDIT: side note. I used to participate in an alternative money forum and the funny thing about it was the neat division between 2 kinds of people:<p>1. Those who had a fear/loathing/suspicion of productivity growth. (left)<p>2. Those who had a fear/loathing/suspicion of macro-economics and the fed. (right)<p>This post is a typical #1 post.

<i>Why have our “needs” risen as our productive powers have, with the result that the hours we devote to employment haven’t fallen as much as Marx or Keynes forecast? Why is it that so many of us - I count myself fortunate to be a partial exception - haven’t used wealth to free ourselves from alienating labour?</i><p>Because we're accelerating.

<i>This, though, raises a question. Why is it that the rise in productivity hasn’t had the effects predicted by Marx and Keynes?</i><p>For Marx, the part about fishing in the morning was after the end of capitalism. In the interim, I think he said something about the capitalists keeping most of the fruits of all the increased productivity. Is that part looking terribly far wrong?